


love is the loneliest place when you fall alone (and my turn there is over)

by atitforatat



Series: the romance series [9]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Investigative Reporter Tendou Satori, Light Angst, M/M, Past Oikawa Tooru/Ushijima Wakatoshi, Post-High School, Pro Volleyball Player Oikawa Tooru, Pro Volleyball Player Ushijima Wakatoshi, Relationship Study, Smitten Ushijima Wakatoshi, but i've dreamed with a investigative reporter tendou sooo, their works don't really matter, ushiten is developing to established
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:02:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24455626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atitforatat/pseuds/atitforatat
Summary: If somebody asked Wakatoshi about love more than one year ago, he would say it was lonely. If he was asked about it now, he would say it wasred.
Relationships: Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: the romance series [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673896
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	love is the loneliest place when you fall alone (and my turn there is over)

**Author's Note:**

> It's actually the ninth fic, but I suck at following the real order so, this is probably the eigth (?)  
> The alternative summary would be: Ushijima reflects about the two times he fell in love.
> 
> Based on [Feel It Twice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0zv8Jhtnk) and lots of Brazilian songs because we are the best at talking about a love gone wrong and then trying to love someone else the right way hahaha
> 
> This is unbeta'd and I'm Brazilian, so pls warn me about massive mistakes  
> I hope you guys enjoy

When Wakatoshi had chosen to fall in love with Oikawa Tooru, it was the most selfish and lonely thing he had ever done. It was a feeling and a relationship so made just for himself that he never realized how Tooru wasn’t keeping up with him anymore.

Not until Oikawa himself exposed their severed link, at least.

Maybe he just showed they didn’t have a _link_ at all, now that Ushijima thought of it.

He loved Oikawa Tooru for many reasons, but none of them came from Tooru himself. The curve of his lips when he gave that side smile after he made a good joke about someone and that someone didn’t understand the offense secluded in it (his favorite subject was Wakatoshi himself and he now could admit he only enjoyed those because they meant Oikawa was giving him attention in some distorted way). The way he played volleyball well enough to keep up with Wakatoshi’s demands. The intelligence and the smart mouth he liked to show off, especially in front of Wakatoshi.

The way he could be the perfect model for anyone and on any category. The way Wakatoshi could think he was _perfect_. The main reason Wakatoshi fell for Oikawa Tooru was that everything he projected in a partner, Tooru seemed to have.

He was athletic, he was beautiful, handsome and pretty all together, he was a great leader and a good company. He was smart, he had a perfect future, he had the same goal professionally, he was a setter and he had perfect social skills and he was strong, and he wouldn’t break under strong hands and just as strong feelings.

Oikawa Tooru was _perfect_. He listened and he talked, he gave as good as he got, and they were always settled.

Wakatoshi was, when they started dating, in heaven, as the saying goes. He had strong arms and an unbreakable confidence and someone by his side that matched his plans on any perspective. Even Tooru’s parents were similar to his family. It was so much perfection, Wakatoshi got drowned in.

They spent some months like that. They kissed, they talked, they shared lots of first times. Wakatoshi’s brain was catching up with what was really going on, on some level, but in a very unconscious way because when shit hit the fan, as the other saying goes, the troubles in paradise had already been successful in turning it all into hell. Hell was blue and had a nationality. It was almost funny.

It was the Oikawa Tooru sort of funny. The kind of dark humor no one truly laughed at expect for the person who made the joke.

And Tooru was always the one making the jokes.

For Wakatoshi, he was walking on clouds and kissing God’s other half. High school came to an end, he didn’t go to nationals and neither did Tooru. He stopped Tooru and the orange ball of endless energy stopped him. But it was all under control since there were professional teams calling home, asking for interviews, chances to see him acting again. There were nice colleges sending him invitations to visit and all of that.

The national volleyball team was waiting for him to come of age. It was all fine and settled. He would go to Tokyo and Tooru seemed to have the same plans. He was also moving soon.

Even after falling in love and actually getting to have something with Oikawa, Ushijima never realized he was loving alone and someone who didn’t exist.

Six months after their high school graduation and their one-year anniversary was getting near, Wakatoshi was still living the dream. He and Hajime even start something resembling a friendship.

Tendou and Tooru still weren’t able to stay in the same room without one of them making an indelicate comment, though Wakatoshi couldn’t say if Tendou ever meant any offense. Nonetheless, Tendou and Hajime ended up being pretty close too.

It was precisely three weeks before the one-year anniversary that Tooru broke things off. And broke hell’s door too, since all the demons came out.

Wakatoshi never saw it coming until it hit him.

He might have not seen it even after it hit him.

It was fast, clean and precise. It felt like he was a pretty good surgeon removing some extra stuff from someone as fast as possible so he wouldn’t dirty his hands.

He said he received a nice proposal in Argentina, that his knee and three lost years in high school didn’t, and probably wouldn’t, do it for him, at least not in Japan anyway.

He didn’t talk and talk and never said anything like you’d expect of someone in love saying to the someone they love that they were going away to, quite literally, the other side of the world. He talked a few words, said a lot of things and wished Wakatoshi all the luck.

Ushijima was known by being blunt about everything small thing and, apart from a lot of people saying it wasn’t a compliment, he always took it as one. So, he let his bluntness go on and asked why, when, how.

He remembered perfectly the feeling of loss he felt when Oikawa (because it was right at that moment he knew ‘Tooru’ wasn’t allowed to roll around his tongue like drops of candy again) decided to speak his mind. And how confused he felt about it. Ushijima didn’t know what exactly happened there, but his mind’s only worry was the feeling of losing someone it had chosen to love.

His heart felt the loss too. Wakatoshi knew it was just an organ without any link to his emotional state, but his stomach wasn’t revolting, his eyes weren’t crying themselves dry and he knew, for some reason, another part of his body must have felt something besides his brain. His heart, though, was pumping blood so fast and desperate he wasn’t sure he could hear anything.

The hush in his ears was _not_ the good kind and he felt a bit of dizziness too. Wakatoshi could even feel everything again if he tried hard enough. He wouldn’t though, it was too uncomfortable and scary even if he understood it better now.

“It was all fun and games until I realized you didn’t see me as a real person.”

And it would have been way better to hear Oikawa saying he didn’t love him than to hear the annulment of his own feelings.

Oikawa sounded indignant and resentful, some of his words were bitter, but that last sentence was pretty much resigned. He seemed tired even though he hadn’t spoken much. It took Wakatoshi a year and lots of longs talks over the phone with Hajime for him to understand the unfairness and selfishness of their relationship. He took way less than that to fell out of love, so it also must have given him some sort of clue.

His mind chose to love the perfect image it created, and it fooled his feelings and himself thinking it for so long he never even considered the possibility of it not being real.

He had chosen to love Oikawa with an image and expectations the real Oikawa could never reach and falling in love with the real Oikawa and his imperfections was what their relationship really needed. What Oikawa needed.

He never asked for a worshipper, but simply for a partner and Wakatoshi never even saw that. The pedestal in which he put Oikawa was actually empty and the real thing being loved was the feeling he developed loving the idea he had of Oikawa.

Thinking about all the time he lost worshipping something that didn’t exist instead of knowing who Oikawa really was still made Wakatoshi feel like he lost something he didn’t have the right to ask again.

And, in all his honest to himself and to everyone, he also didn’t want.

Even if he had acted and felt in a different manner, he could now admit they wouldn’t work either way. Wakatoshi loved Tooru in a selfish manner and might have not loved him the right way, but he knew for sure he was alone in whatever he had done and wherever he had been.

He never got to feel how it was to be loved back and, even if he knew now that it was partially his fault too, he would rather wait for someone who would teach and learn along the way with him.

Oikawa might have been just as selfish in the end. It didn’t matter anymore, but he felt better thinking that he wasn’t the only one to be held responsible for what happened between them and why it didn’t work. They were lonely together but at different places. Oikawa wasn’t in love and Ushijima was. Oikawa only knew the right way to be loved but didn’t know how to get in a place where he could return the gift.

When Wakatoshi had chosen to fall in love with Oikawa Tooru, it was the most selfish and lonely thing he had ever done.

And that’s why, when Oikawa called him again, so much time later, saying he was going back to Japan for vacations and maybe they could try something out, he didn’t call back nor sent a message asking for a _when_.

He was tired of being alone in a place made for two and wished Oikawa never had to go through the same thing to understand him.

**X**

When Wakatoshi fell in love with Tendou Satori, he was the last one to realize he had done it at all. He also hadn’t chosen to do it.

They weren’t always seeing each other and Tendou was still his best friend even if he was more out of town (and often, out of the country) than anyone else he knew. He was also constantly out of contact, but Wakatoshi couldn’t dream of calling someone else his best friend even if the intervals between them seeing each other was a bit bigger than what he’d like it to be. Hajime, who was fixedly out of the country since he lived in another country, was the one who made Ushijima see the apparently _obvious_ thing going on.

The rare times they did video calls with the three of them, Tendou was always the one asking for Oikawa’s whereabouts. He was also always the one who invited Hajime.

Not that Ushijima didn’t like him, he did, this being proved by their constant communication. But he never remembered to invite him.

And Hajime, apparently, had also been tired of being the third wheel in a date where one of the smitten birds didn’t know he was smitten. “How come you knew you loved Oikawa and didn’t know you were pining for your best friend, man? There’s just as much that someone can hide from themselves, dude”.

Which had been a weird way of telling someone that they loved someone else, but Ushijima had accepted as it was. He remembered it with fondness now. He had to ask how Hajime knew it even though they probably had made video-chats in group less than five or six times.

The answer was a laugh closer to a shout, like when Hajime laughed at Oikawa’s expense and their teammates stopped some seconds to stare at him in some sort of wonder. Tendou once said everyone in Aoba Johsai probably had a crush on their ace. Ushijima had never found a reason to contest him. Even nowadays.

The loud response was followed by something a bit less funny. “The worse, or funnier, thing is that you don’t even know he’s a pining mess too.”

After the initial shock, the idea of being in love again pestered him until he started to watch out for similar symptoms. He had feared recognizing the same signals for two main reasons; the first was making the same mistakes again and disappointing Satori. The second, and the scarier one, was Hajime being wrong about his guess and just one of them being a “pining mess”.

Not loving someone the way they wanted to be loved was sad, but not being loved at all scared him. Having a second turn in such a place would be awful since now he would be aware of the empty seat in a table for two. The first time was lonely, yes, but Wakatoshi never knew that until _after_ everything happened.

The loneliness he felt was only understood in the post-reflections, not during the process. This time it could be harder since he acknowledged the feeling and knew it too well for his liking. Ushijima had never been a romantic and Satori confirmed it twice, but if he did start to love, he wanted the whole package.

The first time he met love, it was in a dark place with a painting of someone he admired, and he let himself think it was the actual person. No one came out happy out of it. Actually, he came out alone and only to find his feelings to be shallow and uncared for.

He had wanted a love well cared like a rich plantation. He wanted very beautiful and healthy-looking vegetables coming out of it. Nonetheless, he wanted someone to plant, to water and, finally, to eat them with him. He wouldn’t have it in any other way. Not again.

Wakatoshi felt sweet nostalgia for those unsure moments of self-discovery even though they were quite recent. He was only starting to grow in Japan’s national team and was a newbie on Schweiden Adlers. It had been the nicest moment for him to start anew on something he was previously familiar with since he was doing it with volleyball already.

He was still a newbie in some ways, but now he was in a developing state and Satori was in his own growth spurt, so their timing was _perfect_. But Satori’s timing had been better than perfect because the next time they saw each other, he cut it down to business and just asked if Wakatoshi felt like loving someone again. Or simply trying to.

One thing about Satori was that he wasn’t _blunt_ because he caught enough social clues not to be indelicate all the time, but he was honest and wasn’t self-conscious enough to hold back most things. Which could be read as a flaw since he offended a lot of people without meaning to, but Ushijima loved it. And it had been enough proofing that he could love every little weird thing about Satori, or that he probably already loved all those small details since he was pretty used to most of them.

The other thing about Satori was that there were a lot of things Satori never held back even if he wasn’t the dictionary definition of bluntness. Like a love declaration. Right at the airport and some weeks before he had to travel again, but _perfect_ in its flawed details and in its eccentric metaphors.

There wasn’t a promise of forever or gardening as a couple, it sounded like any other conversation they had but also like something totally new. Satori said hi, asked him about each minor information of his life, and just inquired how his heart was doing.

Wakatoshi thought he was talking about cardiac conditions, which he didn’t have, and Satori laughed and said he was silly and asked if he was ready to open it up again. “I’ve been wondering since I sorta need a place to crash because there’s someone in mine.”

And Ushijima hadn’t known if they were still talking about his love life or if Satori was actually needing a place to stay, but he was glad he had left his home _and_ his heart at the other’s disposal.

He had forgotten, while Satori rambled about all the new places he visited and all the new people he met, that he was previously frightened by this exact thing. When their fingers touched in the walk to Ushijima’s car and, later, when thinking about the first time their lips meet in his home (he had led them there since he still wasn’t sure about Satori’s metaphor), Wakatoshi realized Satori had asked for permission to enter places he had been previously welcomed in.

And, months later, when they were out on a date and had stumbled upon Oikawa, who was visiting the people he left in Japan, he smiled at their proximity. His expression seemed resigned just like more than a year ago, and he tightened his hold on his phone. He complimented Satori then asked Ushijima to ignore whatever weird thing he received. “I hope you’re happy, Ushijima.”

Ushijima had known, somehow, that Oikawa might be in the place he once was, even without seeing what the other sent him.

Later, when they were watching some new show, Satori’s comment about how Oikawa seemed disappointed but not surprised about them, while he mindlessly ate popcorn and snuggled closer to Wakatoshi’s chest, the man realized his fear of going back to where Oikawa was just so they could have a redo was nonsense. That was a place for one and, now, Wakatoshi didn’t know how, and didn’t even want to, to be lonely again since he could have Satori by his side.

And, with that, Wakatoshi also understood that he was literally the last person to know he fell in love again simply because he wasn’t used to the idea of giving and receiving it back. Love had been lonely, and probably could be again, but he knew that, as long as Satori was there, love would be a red hair with a loud laugh offering him company and soda.

When Wakatoshi had chosen to fall in love with Oikawa Tooru, it was the most selfish and lonely thing he had ever done. And, probably because of that, he didn’t do it again. Instead, he didn’t quite choose the next one, but accepted it was a relationship unfinished, still in progress, perfect where it needed to be and flawed when no one was looking. Making it perfect just like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading all of it!!!  
> I can also officially say ushiten is my main pairing since this is my fourth one with them!!!  
> (and second one putting Oikawa in a bad relationship, poor Tooru)  
> About investigative reporter Tendou, I just want to say the fact that he and Wakatoshi don't talk and see each other all the time made me even more deluded with my own headcanon :v
> 
> Anyway, please tell me what you think of it and thank you again c:


End file.
